The man at the helm of the USS Cole when it was attacked by an Al Qaeda cell in 2000 said last month’s release of a Guantanamo Bay detainee linked to the bombers denies justice to the 17 people killed aboard the ship.

Kirk Lippold, who was commanding officer of the U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer when suicide bombers aboard a small fishing boat blew a hole in the side of the ship, told FoxNews.com Mashur Abdallah Ahmed al Sabri’s release was a mistake.

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Sabri is believed to have been part of the Al Qaeda cell behind the Cole attack. (Department of Defense)

“I would have liked to have seen him receive a military commission where he was tried, convicted and sentenced and then his suitability for release determined under the laws of armed conflict,” Lippold said.

“From the perspective of the American people and my crew, he’s never been held accountable,” Lippold added.

In addition to those killed, 37 service members were wounded in the Oct. 12, 2000 attack, which came as the Cole refueled in the Yemeni port of Aden, nearly a year before Al Qaeda would register its signature attack, on 9/11.

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Al Sabri, a 38-year-old Yemeni citizen who was born in Saudi Arabia, was at one point believed to have been a member of the terror cell behind the attack, although a subsequent assessment at Gitmo, like many done on detainees who have since been released, downplayed his role.

The Obama administration has acclerated the release of Guantanamo detainees to fulfill a campaign pledge to critics who say the suspected combatants are being held indefinitely without due process.

There was never enough evidence to bring under a military commission in al Sabri’s case. But a September 2008 report by the Department of Defense assessed al Sabri as “high risk” and “likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests and allies.”

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Commander Kirk Lippold, USS Cole (DDG 67) from videotaped message to friends and family members of the crew aboard USS Cole following a 12 Oct. terrorist attack on the ship while refueling in Aden, Yemen. (RELEASED)

At that time, the reason for continued detention was listed as follows: “Detainee was a member of an Yememi Al Qaeda cell which was directly involved with the USS COLE attack. Detainee attended advanced training in Afghanistan after recruitment by a known Al Qaeda facilitator.”

A 2014 report, however, said al Sabri “may have” trained at a camp, was merely an Al Qaeda “associate” and “probably did not play a significant role in terrorist operations.”

Paul Rester, the former head of interrogations at Guantanamo, said the “language has softened” over the years in many terrorist detainee cases.

“The only thing that could have changed is someone’s perception that al Sabri or someone like him mellowed – that they don’t pose much of a threat anymore,” he said.

But, Rester noted, “we can’t run a jail indefinitely.”

“The problem with Guantanamo from Day One is the conflation of rule of law with law of war,” he said.

Al Sabri’s transfer April 16 to a Saudi rehabilitation program follows a long list of other detainee transfers since President Obama took office.

Obama promised during his presidential campaign to close the military prison, but lawmakers have so far blocked any plans to turn prisoners over to the U.S. penal system. Scores have been released over the last few years, typically sent to their homelands or to countries that have agreed to detain or monitor them, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Senegal and Uruguay.

The military prison once held more than 600 suspected terrorists, but there are now just 80, including 26 more who are expected to be sent to their homelands or to another country by the end of the summer.

Several detainees have returned to the fight against the U.S. once released, including Ibrahim al-Qosi, a Sudanese native who once served as Usama bin Laden’s cook, chauffeur and bookkeeper, and is now believed to be a senior Al Qaeda leader in Yemen. In March, a U.S. official told lawmakers that Americans have been killed by Guantanamo Bay detainees after they were released.

“What I can tell you is unfortunately there have been Americans that have died because of [Guantanamo] detainees,” Paul Lewis, the Pentagon’s special envoy for Guantanamo detention closure, said, though he declined to provide the GOP-led House Foreign Affairs Committee with details.

Maj. Gen. Jay Hood, who once oversaw operations at Guantanamo, said the Saudi rehabilitation program for militant Islamists is well-intended and should be applauded.

But, Hood said he has “little confidence in the Saudi authorities’ ability to monitor the movements of Yemeni GTMO detainees placed in their custody.”

“If history is a guide, we can expect to see some number of them back in the fight soon,” he said. “As a group, the Yemenis held at GTMO represented the most committed and violent of the Islamic extremist in US custody.”

For Lippold, a 41-year-old commander in October 2000, the memory of that morning is still fresh in his mind.

“We had pulled in on a beautiful, hot day for a brief stop for fuel,” the 57-year-old Lippold recalled, saying he expected to be in port for six to eight hours.

Forty-five minutes later, at 11:18 a.m., there was a “thunderous explosion” that violently thrust the ship up to the right, Lippold said.

“I knew instantly something had come along our left-hand side and exploded,” he said. “We were fighting for our lives to keep the ship afloat.”

FBI won’t say whether it listens in through home automation systems

Amazon recently came out with a nifty new home automation device called the Echo. The gadget is an innocuous looking speaker meant to sit in your home and listen for you to bark commands—things like “give me a recipe for borsht,” or “play back in the USSR”— at its integrated personal assistant, Alexa.

It’s always listening so that Alexa can cater to your every need. And in a perfect world, it would be the stuff of Jetsonian dreams—but in the modern big-government surveillance state, it’s simply a reminder of all the ways we’re willingly handing ourselves over to a dystopian future.

Back in March, Gizmodo editor Matt Novak filed a Freedom of Information request with the FBI to see if the agency had yet wiretapped an Echo to listen in on the private conversations of its owner.

He explained the reasoning behind his inquiry thusly:

In 2016, creepy perverts are hacking computer cameras and baby monitors all the time just to get their sick little rocks off. And we know that the NSA can still wiretap your phone even when it’s not turned on. So why wouldn’t law enforcement agencies or intelligence agencies hack your Echo (presumably with a court order) to catch the baddies?

The agency’s answer wasn’t very detailed— but, if you value your privacy, it says plenty. Here’s how the FBI responded:

Please be advised that, upon reviewing the substantive nature of your request, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records responsive to your request pursuant to FOIA exemption … The mere acknowledgement of whether the FBI has any such records in and of itself would disclose techniques, procedures, and/or guidelines that could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law. Thus, the FBI neither confirms nor denies the existence of any records.

Translation, they have or they are working on figuring out how to wiretap Echo and similar devices but they don’t want to get all those pesky privacy advocates asking questions about things like court orders and legality.

While the FBI’s answer to the Echo question is frustrating, it should be in no way surprising to anyone who’s been paying attention to the government’s privacy-violating antics in this technological age.

Way back in 2014, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the government has the ability to listen in through devices that most of us carry constantly without a second thought. The government spy agency can even remotely access a smartphone’s camera and microphone when the device is switched off.

Editors Note: When did a law become a law without a vote by the legislature? Why is the 10th Amendment to the Constitution ignored and our Elected Officials do nothing? Why does anything that destroys our culture, tradition, morality, ethics, small business, free speech, privacy and on and on pushed by this so called leader of the United States go un- challenged by Congress and majority of the States?

Why is the Rights of the majority sacrificed for the rights of a few?

Are we still a Republic or did we morph into a kingship with all the subjects bowing before any injustice the King sees fit????

The Obama Administration in yet another demonstration of its infinite hubris and, yes, wickedness has sent a joint “Dear Colleague” letter from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Education (ED) to all public elementary, middle, and high schools and universities ordering them to allow gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms—and more—or risk loss of federal funds. The DOJ and ED describe the letter as “significant guidance” (emphasis theirs). “Significant guidance” is Newspeak for “Imperial Command.”

The Department of Education issued a similar diktat to public schools in 2014 through another “Dear Colleague” letter, telling them that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination based on “sex,” requires schools to allow gender-dysphoric students to use opposite sex restrooms and locker rooms. Un-elected officials with no law-making authority in the ED simply decided that the word “sex” in the law no longer means just objective, immutable sex as manifest in biology and anatomy. They decided that it also means one’s feelings about one’s sex.

When Title IX said “sex,” however, it actually meant “sex.” For the dull of thinking, Title IX included this:

A recipient [of federal funds] may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex.

If this newest imperious imperial command prevails, all public schools will be required to allow gender-dysphoric students as well as “gender fluid,” “gender non-binary” and “questioning” students to use whichever restrooms and locker rooms correspond to the sex with which the gender genie leads them to “identify.”

1.) On school-sponsored, overnight trips, gender-dysphoric students must be permitted to room with opposite-sex students, and the actual sex of gender-dysphoric students must be concealed from the opposite-sex students with whom they’re rooming (unless all students are required to share their actual sex, which until recently would have been unnecessary). Further, schools maynotrequire gender-dysphoric students to stay in “single-occupancy accommodations.”

2.) In university dorms, gender-dysphoric students must be allowed to room with students of the opposite sex, and the actual sex of gender-dysphoric students must be concealed from their roommates (unless all students are required to share their actual sex).

3.) “School staff and contractors” must no longer use pronouns in accordance with sex but rather in accordance with feelings about sex. So, I guess that means teachers will have to use the linguistic inventions by which “gender fluid,” “gender non-binary,” and “gender-questioning” students may want to be referred (e.g., “zie,” “zim,” “zir,” “zirs,” and “zirself”). Big government is restructuring grammar. Astonishing.

4.) Gender-dysphoric students must be permitted to use restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to the opposite sex. Schools “may make individual-user options available to all students who voluntarily seek additional privacy.” Two important things to note: First, schools “may“—not must—make such options available. Second, this means if girls are not comfortable with a boy in their locker rooms, it is the girls who would have to “voluntarily seek additional privacy.

5.) Gender-dysphoric students must be permitted to take single-sex classes with opposite-sex students.

As I have written ad nauseum, this issue is not centrally about restrooms. It is centrally about the reality and meaning of sex differences, which the left seeks to eradicate. (Ironically, when homosexuals claim they are attracted only to persons of the same sex, they affirm and emphasize the reality of sexual differentiation. The left, however, is rarely constrained by foolish inconsistency.)

The left’s disbelief in the twoness of the sexes defies objective reality. The left’s belief that subjective feelings about objective maleness or femaleness must trump objective maleness and femaleness in every context from potties to pronouns is a philosophical, political, moral, and theological assumption—not an objective fact. And it’s certainly not true.

This, my friends, is something wicked.

Take ACTION:

CLICK HERE to send a message to your U.S. representative, urging him or her to rein in the unelected, leftist federal bureaucrats. Demand a stop to the federal takeover of bathrooms, locker rooms, overnight trips, etc. https://www.votervoice.net/ILFI/Campaigns/46381/Respond